


yoshiko and hanamaru save a kitten

by xtreme-icecream (kamote)



Category: Love Live! Sunshine!!
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-09
Updated: 2017-01-09
Packaged: 2018-09-16 00:25:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,618
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9265643
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kamote/pseuds/xtreme-icecream
Summary: that is, they save a kitten (not smoothly) and chat about nothing afterwards





	

**Author's Note:**

> idk how this got to almost 3000 words tbh? that's life i guess

Hanamaru couldn’t climb trees. Precarious open heights like those gave her vertigo faster than she could fall to the ground, and from her experience, any tree bark you could climb was often rough and dirty and rife with little bugs waiting to crawl out in droves at the lightest touch. In her fifteen years of life on this worldly earth she never found anything up in those branches that was ever worth the bother of soiling her clothes and exposing her hands and knees to the threat of scrapes and splinters like that.

Except, she supposed, things like the stuck calico kitten she found that afternoon.

It mewled sadly atop the thick of a tree branch only a meter above Hanamaru’s head, but as short a distance as that was, Hanamaru’s arms were even shorter in reach. Five minutes of vain stretching and upset pacing around the root passed before she huffed, set her school bag down on the leaf-covered earth underfoot, and began to steel her resolve to climb up there herself.

Yes, she’d climb up there by herself. Two and a half or so meters wasn’t very high, and climbing trees wasn’t hard at all. She’d seen Chika and Yō do it all the time harvesting mikan, and it was basically… hugging the tree with all your limbs… and pulling yourself up.

So what if Hanamaru’s arms could hardly get halfway around the trunk? So what if her clunky, beaten, leather school shoes had an awkward grip around the base of the tree? Her friends scaled giants. This was a runt. She could handle this.

Hanamaru dug her fingers into the bark—ouch, ew—took a deep, shaky breath of autumn air, and—

“Aaah! Zuramaru!”

Hanamaru jolted out of her grip and nearly stumbled back onto the ground. When she regained her balance she found Yoshiko standing behind her and greeted her with the best shaky smile she could muster. “H-Hiya, Yoshiko-chan.”

Yoshiko looked just a tad anxious, as she does before she looses Yohane into society and says something too loud. “Wh-What were you doing?”

“Uh, climbin’ a tree, I guess?” Hanamaru pointed up. “See, a little kitten’s stuck up there and I can’t get him down from down here.”

“B-But you can’t just climb a tree like that!”

“Why not? I see you guys do it all the time.”

“Sure, we do, but _you_ don’t!” Yoshiko’s fists balled at her sides and her arms tensed, but she drew in a deep breath that Hanamaru assumed was for calming. “L-Listen, Zuramaru, to climb trees is not so frivolous an undertaking that a novice should attempt it alone.” Her gaze shifted sideward, shyly, if Hanamaru had to interpret it. “Furthermore, I, with my chthonic powers of extrasensory perception, observed that you would have advanced very little up this tree, perhaps even to fall! A-As your dark superior I could not stand by idly and let those treacherous forces bring you harm.”

Hanamaru stared for a moment to let Yoshiko’s ramblings sit and simmer in her head. “…Yoshiko-chan, you were that worried about me? Enough to yell and everything?”

Yoshiko recoiled, but puffed her chest out and crossed her arms. “I-It is the unholy duty of the fallen angel Yohane to watch over her subjects!”

Somehow, Yoshiko’s unsteady pose, wrinkled brow and crooked little frown made Hanamaru’s heart swell. Some _words_ were at the tip of her tongue—“Yoshiko-chan, you’re actually a pretty nice person,” and, “You’re so cute, Yoshiko-chan,” and some peculiar, warm feeling that was a bit trickier to put _into_ words—but Hanamaru didn’t think it was the time for those words; not the way Yoshiko was right then, just a little too volatile.

So instead she drew attention to the kitten’s continued mewling. “Well then, my subjects are yours, ain’t they?”

Yoshiko settled, eyes narrowed a hair’s width at Hanamaru. “Yes…?”

“Then the kitten,” Hanamaru said. “I’m thinking about screening him as my familiar, but like I said I can’t get to him, so…”

Yoshiko held her hand up. “S-Say no more,” she said. “I will gladly, um, get him for you. Just—here, hold my bag.”

Hanamaru couldn’t help herself and made the biggest, most relieved and grateful grin she’d ever made that whole month. She didn’t really know what words of thanks she was saying, but she clapped a little before taking Yoshiko’s bag and dutifully holding onto it as she watched Yoshiko prepare for her ascent.

And how clear it was that Yoshiko was a practiced climber. There was little Hanamaru could find to admire about tree-climbing technique, but Yoshiko scaled it steadily and with smooth upward pulls that Hanamaru doubted she would’ve been able to pull off herself.

Absently, Hanamaru wondered why Yoshiko had this skill in the first place. She hated mikan, as Hanamaru learned when she stole from Yoshiko’s share and was given thanks in return, so this wasn’t something that came from the mikan orchards. Did she rescue cats often? Unlikely; this was rare enough an occurrence as it was.

“You’re really good at this, Yoshiko-chan,” Hanamaru said. “Do you climb trees a lot?”

“Used to,” Yoshiko said through a grunt. She was adjusting her position now, trying to get a proper angle at the branch or something. Hanamaru felt like holding her breath a little. “But I haven’t been doing it much lately.”

“Why’s that? What made you do it before?”

“Ahh, well. You know.” Yoshiko’s tone wavered, as if trying to slip around the answer, and she said something just softly enough for Hanamaru not to make out.

“What was that, Yoshiko-chan?”

“Got him!”

They weren’t getting back to the subject. The kitten was in Yoshiko’s hand now, but Hanamaru wouldn’t quite call it _secure_. A lot of the support for Yoshiko’s weight looked to be spread all across her limbs in a stretched and fragile balance. The grip her shoes had on the bark looked reliable enough, though, and Yoshiko didn’t shake or sway or look down. Maybe Hanamaru just needed a little more faith.

“Say, uh, Zuramaru,” Yoshiko said, her voice strained with effort, “is there any way for you to take him from me?”

“Oh.” Hanamaru looked around. “Uh, I could reach up with this bag? You keep your Stygian Cloak in here so I wager it’s pretty soft to stay on.”

“Sounds good,” Yoshiko said. “Raise it up close.”

Hanamaru stepped closer to the tree and raised Yoshiko’s bag as close to the branch as she could. From her perch on the tree, Yoshiko reached out with the cat in her grasp, slowly toward the bag Hanamaru held up.

Slowly, carefully, steadily…

When the bark under her high foot gave out.

“H-Hanamaru!”

“Aah! I got you!”

The lightning of instinct coursed through Hanamaru’s body and without her own thought her limbs moved until the next thing she knew, the kitten sat atop Yoshiko’s school bag, its little claws digging into the thick fabric.

At the sight of it, Hanamaru heaved another sigh. “Oh, that was too close, zura. I’m glad you’re safe, little one.”

She listened happily to the kitten’s softer mewls, but soon what mixed with them were groans of pain. Hanamaru turned around.

“Aah! Yoshiko-chan!” Hanamaru crouched over Yoshiko’s pained and crumpled form. “Are you okay?”

Yoshiko groaned. “My wings…Again, I was forsaken… Bakamaru, help me up already.”

“Oh, okay…”

Hanamaru placed the kitten and the bag at the base of the tree to help Yoshiko back up. She wobbled and stood with a bit of a slouch, but she didn’t appear to have any serious injuries when Hanamaru looked her over.

Hanamaru placed her hand on her chest and sighed for the hundredth time that afternoon. When he pulled it back she noticed a faint smear of blood across her palm. She took a moment to reflect on it.

“Yoshiko-chan, your hands!”

“My what?” Yoshiko glanced at her palm. “Ah. Never fear, my little demon. ‘Tis but a scratch.”

“A-And your leg!”

“And that, just a flesh wou—Aah! My sock!”

“Your sock?! Yoshiko-chan, you’re _bleeding!_ ”

* * *

Luckily, Hanamaru’s house was close enough to limp to in ten minutes.

Upon arrival, she didn’t waste a second. Within five minutes the scrapes on Yoshiko’s palm and leg were cleaned and ready for real treatment, and within a fraction of a fraction of that time Hanamaru sat Yoshiko down on the futon in her room, which was where her medicine was, last time she checked.

“Sit tight,” Hanamaru said, rummaging through her cabinets for her medicine box, “I’ll just drop some disinfectants on ‘em and then later we’ll figure out how to cover ‘em up the best.”

Yoshiko seemed to heed her with a fairly vacant nod. The kitten, at least, loyally followed them around to meow at everything it found interesting. Yoshiko, on the other hand, had been so inexpressive and generally un-Yoshiko that Hanamaru wondered if she overlooked a dazing hit to the head earlier.

“Yoshiko-chan, does it hurt a lot?”

“Does what hurt?” Yoshiko said.

“Anything, zura.” Hanamaru sat in front of Yoshiko’s leg, looking carefully over the scrape with a cotton bud doused in cleansing solution in her hand. “You’ve been awful quiet is all.”

There’s a short pause. “Oh. I have? I never really noti—hyaa-ha-ha, ouch, that stings.”

“Even with that stinging you’re talking a bit too flat,” Hanamaru said, pouting and poking the cotton bud toward Yoshiko. “When I do this for Ruby-chan I have to hold her leg down sometimes just to keep her from kicking me by accident and stuff.”

“Ruby? You treat her?”

“Hm? Oh, yeah.” Hanamaru went back to spreading the solution around the mild edges of the wound. “Ruby-chan was really clumsy back then, and sometimes when she got fell and got injured like this she didn’t want to bother Dia-san with it because she was really busy, so I did it for her.”

“Sounds like you—ow, careful with that—sounds like you didn’t mind.”

“Of course not! Ruby-chan is very important to me, you know. She does more for me than I could ever do for her, in fact, whether she knows it or not, so I take any opportunity to pay her back, like this.” Hanamaru started to feel herself getting back into old routine, where she can find the bottle of solution without looking as she continued to talk. “It hardly happens anymore, though. Ruby-chan’s really growing up.”

“Well, dancing takes a _little_ dexterity, after all,” Yoshiko said, lolling her head to the side. She seemed to be watching the kitten, who had jumped into an empty space between Hanamaru’s books. “But I kinda thought Ruby wasn’t the type to get her knees scuffed up, or at least, she didn’t run around much for it to happen or whatever.”

“Why would you think that?”

Yoshiko had been lying on her elbows for a while, so she shrugged with her hands and a small tilt of the head. “I’ve seen her knees. I mean, her socks aren’t really high, so of course I’d see them, and I noticed they’re pretty clear. So I guess you were good at this.”

“Eh? Well, shucks, I wouldn’t know about that…”

Hanamaru’s stare strayed down from Yoshiko’s wound, around her calf. Her skin was paler than Ruby’s, and smooth enough for Hanamaru to remember Yoshiko mentioning some skin care regimen she followed, but in her concentration she happened to notice faint streaks and patches where it was discoloured—a few small, old scars, and a few bigger, newer ones.

Something nudged Hanamaru’s side and pulled her out of her trance. Yoshiko’s foot.

And she wouldn’t stop. “Hey, Zuramaru,” she said, punctuating each pause with a poke. She was grinning about it, too. “Why so quiet all of a sudden? Thinking about Ruby-chan, maybe?”

The poking was getting ticklish and sending Hanamaru into a giggling fit, but before she started to lose her self-control to laughter, she took Yoshiko’s ankle in one hand and poured a few drops of disinfectant on her wound.

Yoshiko bolted upright with a yelp. “Ow! What the hell, Zuramaru?!”

“P-Payback, zura,” Hanamaru said. “You were tickling me on purpose, weren’t you?”

“Tickle you? Psh, no _way_ I’d do that—my leg’s on the line.”

“Liar,” Hanamaru said. “And don’t think I didn’t notice you using Ruby-chan to avoid the question about being quiet. Hand, please.”

Yoshiko gave Hanamaru her hand, which twitched little when Hanamaru put the first drops of solution on it. “So you still think I’m quiet even after I tickled you with my foot?”

“Well, it’s been just the two of us for a while and I haven’t heard anything about hellspawn or nachts or blood pacts yet, so I don’t think you can blame me if I think something’s a bit off.”

Yoshiko huffed, and covered part of her face with her other hand. “Well, we are in a temple, are we not?” she said. “Yohane’s influence would obviously have more difficulty manifesting on such holy ground, but for you, Little Demon, she’s gathered her powers to appear before you and ease your troubles.”

“That sounds fake, zura.”

“Hey, that’s cold.” Yoshiko put her hand down. “I was doing it for you, you know.”

“What you can do for me is answer my question. Is Yoshiko-chan not comfortable here?”

“Really, it’s no big deal. I’ve just been distracted.”

“Distracted by what?”

“I don’t know—you.”

Now Hanamaru _had_ to look at Yoshiko. “So I’m distracting, am I?”

Yoshiko had color in her skin now. “Geez, yeah, I mean, this isn’t about how pretty you are, it’s not the time for that, but uh, well.” Her free hand fiddled with the end of her tie. “I guess I’m not used to being taken care of?”

“How do you get into a feeling like that? Do you feel distracted at doctor appointments, too?”

“Uh, no,” Yoshiko said. “This isn’t like that, Zuramaru. I mean, you know I was a little batty as a kid. I’ve fallen from my fair share of trees and stuff, too, and since it was out of school hours that I played around there and my mom had a long work day, I usually put the medicine on myself. So this is unusual for me.”

“Oh…” Yoshiko’s hand was basically finished, too, but Hanamaru still said, “Sorry, did you want to do this yourself?”

“No, it’s not like that,” Yoshiko said. “This is just different from what I’m used to. Besides, from the looks of it, you’re better at this stuff than I am, anyway. Thanks.”

“Ah, you’re welcome, zura.”

Silence settled over them. Hanamaru began to pack up her medicine kit while Yoshiko looked at her newly-treated palm. The kitten yawned softly.

“Oh, that reminds me,” Hanamaru said. “I didn’t catch what you said when I asked you why you liked to climb trees.”

“Aahh, hehe, that.” Yoshiko’s lips curled on one end and she looked to the corner of the room. “If you missed it the first time, should I really repeat myself?”

Hanamaru put on her best pout. “Yoshiko- _chan.”_

“Okay, geez, you’re persistent.” Yoshiko took a deep breath. “You’ll think I’m weird, but heights are just kind of my thing.”

“You like heights or something?”

Yoshiko shrugged. “Well, yeah, _now_ I do, but it wasn’t really that…”

“Then what was it?”

“Ehh, it was like I said earlier. I was a dumb kid and uh.” Her voice seemed to try hiding again, and her blush climbed up to her ears. “I thought it was closer to heaven.”

* * *

 

They christen the kitten ‘Jagaimo,’ and after a dark rite of passage he becomes Hanamaru’s first familiar.

**Author's Note:**

> 'jagaimo' means 'potato'. 'poteto' also means 'potato' but it's not the same
> 
> thanks for readin, hope it entertained


End file.
